To generalise, there are two somewhat recurrent complaints about Bret Easton Ellis’ work.The first is that it is violent. The second is that he frequently writes with little emotion. As facts, both these state¬ments apply to Imperial Bedrooms; as criticisms, they are invalid.

This novel is a sequel to Ellis’ debut novel Less Than Zero, set decades later in the same city. If you recall, Less Than Zero was about a group of hedonistic young adults in Los Angeles. Imperial Bedrooms revisits them in the present-day, middle-aged, as a plot regarding the death of one of their own unravels before the reader.

So why are the aforementioned criti¬cisms invalid? The simple answer is that the novel is written in the first-person.

In Imperial Bedrooms – as in much of Ellis’ output – Ellis does not write about pleasant things. It is difficult to like most of the characters in this novel. They are deeply flawed and often amoral human beings, not least its narrator Clay. They frequently commit transgres-sive acts and seem to react nonchalantly to them.

Imperial Bedrooms might be about people who are ‘dead inside’, who ‘never liked anyone’ and are ‘afraid of people’, but one would assume its readers are not such people. Giving up the pursuit of liking one’s narrator is arguably an essential part of enjoying these works.

Seeing them as products of their envi¬ronment and as a mirror to the broken, impersonal worlds they are trapped in arouses a sympathy in the reader that the characters themselves may be inca¬pable of feeling.Indeed, your reviewer finds that this novel arouses both terror and poignan¬cy, befitting of the tragic form. It is not Ellis who writes with little emotion; it is his protagonist.

Answering the siren call of doughnuts leaves you the same at the end, with regret. Yeasty fried goodness before a sticky aftertaste.

Donut King: DM went to DK at the end of the day, when they were selling bags of six doughnuts for four dollars.One yeast ring topped with chocolate is glorious; six, magnificent. DM may have consumed all the doughnuts in one evening: three chocolate, three straw¬berry.DK form the base line, the standard by which to judge others. So what do we have? A yeast ring, texture is soft. The icing is chocolatey, sweet, without being overpowering. The aftertaste, regret but not self-flagellation. DM does not recommend eating six doughnuts in a short space of time, but it’s doable and you won’t hate yourself afterwards.**Depending on your current mental state and predilections.

Krispy Kreme: DM had one ne¬farious friend who wanted to share the doughnuts. Not so: all the doughnuts are for DM.For consistency, DM got a yeast ring topped with chocolate and one filled with jam. DM likes honesty and some¬where in the ingredients used to prepare KK donuts is something that causes the worst aftertaste and subsequent regret. Perhaps it is by design that the regret can be remedied with more KK donuts, starting the vicious cycle.

Big Lou’s Donuts on Brunswick Street: DM may have been drinking and on its way home, when it stumbled across a doughnut shop on Brunswick Street. DM wanted hot cinnamon doughnuts but the vendor had sold all of them to the previous customers, given that it was closing time.DM said, here’s five dollars, give me all the doughnuts you can. Five doughnuts later, three yeast rings and two jam filled, DM was happily on the tram. Doughnuts are joy filled with sadness, these are no exception. Good to start and then murder on the train home.

Auction Rooms in North Mel¬bourne: DM got a recommendation for the almond croissants. DM went directly and sampled one. DM even savoured it.The texture, soft and light. Taste, bal¬anced with almonds and butter coming through. Aftertaste, yet more glorious.DM loves doughnuts but DM would eat the almond croissants everyday and twice on Tuesdays. One almond crois¬sant costs $4 or so. All around it was a better experience, if you can stomach hipster cafes. No regrets.

A lacklustre election campaign dominat¬ed by discussion of costings and opinion polls has culminated in Tony Abbott being elected as Australia’s 28th Prime Minister.

Abbott ran a disciplined, well-or¬ganised and largely positive campaign, promising a return to ‘adult’ government that people could depend on. He will be sworn in by Governor-General Quentin Bryce sometime next week.

As the dust settles, there will be little time for Abbott to catch his breath. His Government faces considerable chal¬lenges. The greatest of these is a sluggish economy and the likelihood of rising un¬employment. Last week’s quarterly GDP figures showed an economy growing at 2.6 per cent annually, well below trend.Contributing to the result was, first, weak consumer confidence. Consumers remain wary to spend despite a string of interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank. The savings rate – the ratio between savings and income – continued to increase, edging up to 10.8 per cent as households pay down debt.Business, too, is lacking confidence. The gross operating surpluses of cor¬porations fell by 3.2 per cent in 2012-13, the biggest fall in 50 years. Mining investment continues to peter out amid lower commodity prices.

According to Westpac chief economist Bill Evans “the task of filling the gap created by the slowdown in mining is spectacular”

Abbott will also be under pressure to stem the flow of asylum seeker arriv¬als, this having been one of his central campaign commitments. His policies in this area, such as the reintroduction of temporary protection visas, will not be implemented overnight. There is the risk, however, if numbers do not begin to fall soon that Abbott will be seen as ‘all talk’. The Labor Party will be ruthless in scrutinizing Abbott’s performance.Finally, Abbott needs to be wary of the ‘do nothing government’ tag. The great challenge of government is that it requires not only sound administration but also effective spruiking of that sound administration. Governments have to give people a sense of what they’re on about, they have to seem purposeful. If not, people tend to conclude that the government is floundering.

In Opposition, Abbott’s purpose was more or less defined by his systemic role – to hold the government to account.In government, however, it’s all on him. He must craft his own story that the elec¬torate can cling onto. Abbott has already intimated that he wants to be known as an ‘infrastructure Prime Minister’.

As he confronts these challenges, Abbott will be strengthened by a tal¬ented and experienced group of senior ministers. Julie Bishop, Andrew Robb, Joe Hockey, Malcolm Turnbull, George Brandis, Kevin Andrews, Ian Macfar¬lane and many others have ministerial experience. Robb and Turnbull are suc¬cessful businessmen in their own right. Brandis is an SC. Greg Hunt, the incom¬ing Environment Minister, is a former partner at McKinsey. Arthur Sinodinos, who appears likely to take the Finance portfolio, was John Howard’s Chief of Staff for a decade and has held senior positions at both Goldman Sachs and the NAB.

Also in Abbott’s favour is a sizeable majority in the House and a clear man¬date to implement his policy agenda.

With the recent federal election taking over our lives temporarily, Professor Dan Rosen of Chuo University, Tokyo gave a timely seminar on election cam¬paigning in Japan.Up until last July’s general election in Japan, campaigning had been severely restricted by legislation that aimed to ensure equality amongst all candidates.

Restrictions included the size and placement of electoral posters as well as limits on the number of flyers that could be distributed to the electorate. As In¬ternet campaigning was prohibited, the most common method of promotion was undertaken in person at train stations or via ‘electoral vans’ that drive around the electorate broadcasting the candidate’s name.

In practice, this gave the incumbent undue advantage as voters are un¬likely to endorse a candidate they do not know, particularly when policies are generally not published due to the restrictions on flyers, etc.The recent amendments that allowed for Internet campaigning, therefore, aimed to address this issue head on.

The prohibition on the use of internet campaigns was lifted and candidates were allowed to publish websites and promote themselves via email for the first time in the recent national elections.Interestingly though, voters them¬selves are prohibited from distributing information about candidates and face fines and imprisonment if they breach these rules.

Although some 200 breaches of the new law were discovered, the govern¬ment decided not to prosecute, due to lack of awareness about how the new legislation functions.

While restrictive campaigning meas¬ures do not promote democracy, in my opinion, I can’t say that I am opposed to the idea of restricting leafleting after the mass of leaflets I received during the recent campaign period.

Recently, third year JD Michelle Cheng and I went to Israel, to attend the Student Conference on International Law (SCIL) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.The conference was organized by Israeli advocacy group StandWithUs, and provided many speakers from a variety of legal, political and military backgrounds to speak on Israel’s experi¬ence with international law, particularly focusing on aspects of international humanitarian law, as they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Whilst the speakers were all Jewish (there were no Palestinian or Christian Arab speakers), the organisers made every effort to provide a diversity of opinion within this segment of Israeli society.Arriving on Sunday morning, we had an opportunity for a quick dip in the Mediterranean in Tel Aviv, before bus¬sing to Jerusalem.

Speakers throughout the confer¬ence included a current Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, Uzi Vogelman, who took time between hearings to speak to us at the Court, and Sydney-born former solicitor at Clayton Utz, Lieutenant Ben Wahlhaus, who now works as a Legal Advisor in the Interna¬tional Law Department of the Israel De¬fense Forces Military Advocate General’s Corps.

A highlight was hearing from Adv. Sari Bashi, co-founder and Executive Di¬rector at Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization that protects the right to freedom of movement in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Bashi spoke of her academic work in formulating the ‘functional approach’ to the law of occupation, motivated by the Israeli government’s insistence that not having ‘boots on the ground’ after their 2004-2005 withdrawal of troops from Gaza meant the strip was no longer occupied, and thus no longer a source of legal liability.

Being such a politically charged topic, there were often disagreements between the mostly European student body and some of the speakers, disagreements that usually centered on semantics.Examples include whether the ‘wall’ between the West Bank and west Jerusalem should be called a ‘wall’ or a ‘terrorism prevention security barrier’.

Another semantic stoush occurred when a retired colonel took us on a geo-political tour of Jerusalem, and pre¬ferred the term ‘family friendly neigh¬borhood’ to ‘illegal settlement’.

Whilst these inevitable disagreements led to some intellectual friction, perhaps the greatest aspect of the conference was each speaker’s openness about their position and biases, and willingness to engage critically on issues of contention.

Having the opportunity to discuss Aharon Barack’s purposive approach to statutory interpretation with a sitting Supreme Court justice, and challenge a senior IDF officials claims of pinpoint exactitude in military operations, was an incredible experience that will stick in my mind for years to come.

The conference was also a fantastic opportunity to meet like-minded stu¬dents from around the world, passionate about the future prospects of interna¬tional law. I would encourage others to apply next year to attend this wonderful conference.

Photo saved under *MLS STUDENT RAOUL RENARD WITH EAST JERUSALEM IN THE BACKGROUND.